Frederick the Great had the misfortune to suffer now from subordinates so loyal that they went beyond their master’s commands, and officials with a blundering zeal not according to knowledge.

The second part of “Akakia” had flung him into one of the greatest furies of his life. The unmeasured terms in which he wrote of Voltaire to his sister have been recorded. Wilhelmina’s propitiating answer did not propitiate him. Voltaire was maddeningly and devilishly clever. The sting of the “Akakia” supplements lay in part for Frederick the Great in the fact that he could hardly prevent himself from laughing at such an exquisite humour, nor withhold his admiration of such a dazzling and daring genius. But add to this, that in making a fool of his President, Voltaire had also made a fool of the President’s friend and King; that that King had cringed to win Voltaire to Prussia, and cringed to keep him. Still extant were the royal letters filled with the wildest hyperbole of devotion and of admiration. He had stooped to entreat. He had licked dust to keep the Frenchman his property; and he had done it in vain. It may be forgiven him that, like Naaman the Syrian, he went away in a rage.

Before he went to Silesia he had caused to be written on April 11th that memorable order to Freytag, before alluded to, wherein he commanded Freytag to deprive Voltaire on his arrival at Frankfort of that Key, Cross and Order, all papers in the King’s handwriting, and—“the book specified in the note enclosed.” Only—there was no note enclosed, and no book specified at all.

A conscientious and fussy old busybody was Freytag; worryingly anxious to do right, and fretfully and rightly suspecting himself to be no match for Voltaire. Back he writes to Potsdam on April 21st, asking further instructions about that unspecified book; and “If Voltaire says he has sent on his luggage ahead, are we to keep him a prisoner at Frankfort till he has brought it back?”

“Yes,” comes back the answer on April 29th. “Keep him in sight till the luggage is brought back and he has given to you the royal manuscripts, especially the book called ‘Œuvre de PoÉsie.’”

For six weeks, while Voltaire was amusing himself with his Duchess and his “Annals,” fussy Freytag awaited him. Voltaire spent the night of May 31st in perfect tranquillity at the inn of the “Golden Lion.” On June 1st, Freytag, Councillor Rucker, who represented a Councillor Schmidt who was ill, and Lieutenant Brettwitz called upon Voltaire at eight o’clock in the morning at the “Golden Lion,” and in the name of his Prussian Majesty requested his Prussian Majesty’s ex-guest to deliver up immediately all the royal manuscripts, the Key, the Cross and the Order.

It was not wonderful, perhaps, that at this request Voltaire flung himself back in his chair and closed his eyes, overcome. Even to Freytag’s unemotional vision the Frenchman appeared ill, and was nothing better than a skeleton. Collini ransacked Voltaire’s trunks at his order. He delivered up all the royal manuscripts—save one which he sent to Freytag the next morning, saying he had found it later under a table. The Key and the Ribbon—that Key which had long torn his pocket, and that Ribbon which had been a halter round his neck—he also gave to Freytag. He sent on to him in the evening his commission as King’s Chamberlain. As for the “Œuvre de PoÉsie”—why, that, says Voltaire, I packed up with other books in a box, and, for the life of me, cannot tell you whether the box is at Leipsic or at Hamburg.

Considering the passionate nature of his desire to be out of this Prussia; considering his wretched health, which really did need PlombiÈres waters, or some waters or some great change of scene and of air; considering the affront that was being put upon him; considering the fact that that “Œuvre de PoÉsie” was his own, a present from the King, corrected and embellished by M. de Voltaire himself, it must be conceded that he took the news that he was to be a prisoner at the Frankfort inn until that unlucky book was forthcoming, pretty philosophically. He did indeed beg vainly to be allowed to pursue his journey. It was not pleasant to have to sign a parole not to go beyond the garden of one’s hotel; to have for host a man under oath not to let his guest depart. It was not pleasant to have three blundering German officials turning over one’s effects for eight consecutive hours, from nine in the morning till five o’clock in the afternoon. The facts that Freytag—who certainly meant very well—confided Voltaire’s health to the best doctor in the place, and offered the captive the pleasure of a drive with himself, the great Freytag, the Resident, in the public gardens, were insufficient consolations for delay and indignity. Freytag signed a couple of agreements wherein he declared that as soon as the book arrived, Voltaire could go where he liked. One copy of the agreement Voltaire kept. He and Collini declared that Freytag spelled PoÉsie, PoËshie; and on the second copy which Voltaire sent to Madame Denis, to reassure her, her uncle wrote “Good for the Œuvre de PoËshie of the King your master!” Voltaire could still joke; and still work. He was not all unhappy.

He went on with his “Annals.” He received visitors—as a famous person whose extraordinary detention had already got wind in the town. He walked in the garden with Collini. He wrote several letters, without even alluding to his present circumstances. He was still a laughing philosopher. He enjoyed that PoËshie joke immensely. He also enjoyed boxing the ears of Van Duren, once printer at The Hague and now retired to Frankfort, who waited on him with a bill thirteen years old. Collini found his master, as ever, good and benevolent.

Five days later he had begun to grow a little impatient. Worthy Freytag was shocked when he visited his captive on that fifth day of his detention, June 5th, to hear him ask if he could not change his residence, and go and call on the Duke of Meiningen; and, worst of all, break out into invectives against that solemn old conscientious stupidity, the Resident himself. Freytag, not a little flurried, went home and wrote for more explicit commands from Potsdam. Since that first order, dated April 11th, none had proceeded directly from Frederick. He was still away on his tour: and to Fredersdorff in Potsdam and Freytag in Frankfort, his too zealous servants, belongs most of the dishonour and ridicule the affair heaped on the name of Frederick.

Freytag was no sooner out of the house than Voltaire, who still pursued his old, old policy of leaving no stone unturned, sat down and wrote a very cunning letter to the Emperor of Austria beseeching his interference in his, Voltaire’s, behalf. The day before, on June 4th, he had written a similar one to d’Argenson, showing how it would really be to the best interest of the French Ministry to come to his rescue. On June 7th, he wrote to d’Argental of his detention with a calm and philosophy which, as has been well said, people keep as a rule for the misfortunes of others.

On the ninth day of his captivity, that is to say, June 9, 1753, there drew up at the door of the “Golden Lion” a post-chaise containing a very fat, hot, breathless, and excited lady of uncertain years, who fell upon the captive’s neck and fervently embraced him, crying out “Uncle! I always said that man would be the death of you.”

Marie Louise Denis was at this time about three-and-forty years old. Idle, self-indulgent, and extravagant, she was a good-humoured person enough if a vast appetite for pleasure were gratified to the full. Voluble, bustling, and impetuous; foolish, but not without a certain vulgar shrewdness; affectionate, until the objects of her affections were out of sight, when she entirely forgot all about them; vain, greedy, and good-natured; much too lazy to be long offended with anyone, and quite incapable of speaking the truth—Madame Denis was a type of woman which has never been uncommon in any age. So long as she was happy and comfortable herself, she was quite ready to allow her neighbours to be so too. She was a cordial hostess; and talked a great deal and at the very top of her voice. With a mind as wholly incapable of real cultivation as was her heart of any great or sustained feeling, from long association with Voltaire she caught the accent of cleverness, as after living in a foreign country one catches the accent of a language though one may know nothing of its construction, its grammar, or its literature.

If Voltaire had been in many respects unfortunate in the first woman who influenced his life, he was a thousand times more so in the second. If Madame du ChÂtelet had had a shrewish temper, she had had transcendent mental gifts; Madame Denis had the shrew’s temper with a mind essentially limited and commonplace. Madame du ChÂtelet had once loved Voltaire; Madame Denis never loved anything but her pleasures. From the first moment of her connection with him, his niece was a worry and a care to him—making him, as well as herself, ludicrous with her penchant for bad playwriting and her elderly coquetries. It is not insignificant that Longchamp, Collini, and WagniÈre hated her from their souls. (Collini, indeed, politely praised her in his memoirs, written long after the events they chronicled, and roundly abused her in his letters written at the time.) Voltaire kept her with him, partly no doubt because the tie of relationship bound them. But his enemies may concede that if he had not been in domestic life one of the most generous, patient, good-humoured, forbearing, and philosophic of men, he would have snapped that tie in the case of Louise Denis without compunction.

It must be briefly noted here that those enemies declare that there was another tie between Voltaire and Madame Denis than that of uncle and niece. But if there had been why should it not have been legalised by marriage? An appeal to the Pope and the payment of a certain sum alone were necessary. Voltaire was not too moral, but he was too shrewd, and had had far too much experience of the painful consequences of acting illegally, to do so when it was totally unnecessary. He had been, too, but a cold lover to Madame du ChÂtelet with her Éblouissante personality. What in the world was there to make a decrepit uncle of nine-and-fifty fall in love with a lazy, ugly niece of forty-three, who bored him? The thing is against nature. The tone in which he speaks of Madame Denis in his letters—good-humoured and patronising—is certainly not the tone of a lover. Add to this, that the foolish relict of M. Denis was always the victim of gallant penchants for quite other persons than Voltaire, now for d’Arnaud, now for XimenÈs, presently for young secretary Collini, and a handsome major of twenty-seven.

The age was a vile one; and Voltaire was in it and of it. No woman, were she ever so old and ugly, could have been at the head of his house and escaped calumny. But he may be exonerated from being his niece’s lover. It was a sin he had no mind to.

He was undoubtedly very sincerely glad to see her at the present moment. And if she was not quite heroic enough to keep herself from saying, “I told you so!” she was quite good-natured enough to sympathise with her uncle, even if he had brought his misfortunes at least in part upon himself. This meeting, too, had been so long planned, written of, and delayed. Both uncle and niece—not yet knowing each other as fatally well as they were soon to do—had heartily desired it. One of the very first things practical Madame Denis did was to sit down and write on June 11th a very sensible and moving letter to Frederick the Great, which, if her uncle did not help in its composition, is an example of the truth of the axiom that one intuition of a woman is worth all the reasoning of a man. It was not Madame Denis’s fault that that appeal to Frederick to let Voltaire go free did not reach Frederick until it was too late to be of use. She had already implored the good offices of Lord Keith, who had been of Frederick’s suppers, and was now in France as Prussian envoy; and the prudent Scotchman had replied advising her to recommend Uncle Voltaire to keep quiet, and to remember that “Kings have long arms.” Nothing daunted, Madame Denis wrote to Keith again. This letter, too, though in the niece’s hand, bears evidence of the uncle’s brain. The energetic pair (Madame Denis declared in every letter that they were both very ill) further wrote to d’Argenson and Madame de Pompadour to lay before France the astonishing facts of their case.

It only remained for Madame Denis after this to try and cheer the captivity of the prisoner of the “Golden Lion,” and to help him entertain the illustrious local notables who came to call upon him.

Early on the morning of Monday, June 18th, the chest containing that famous “Œuvre de PoËshie” was delivered at Freytag’s house. “Now we can go!” thinks Voltaire. He completed his preparations. He sent Collini to Freytag’s house to be present at the opening of the parcel. But cautious Freytag was awaiting clearer orders from Potsdam: and would not open the case. Voltaire sent Collini many times during that morning; nay, many times in a single hour: and Freytag sent him away again. At noon comes a despatch to Freytag from Fredersdorff. “Do nothing,” says that official, “until the King returns here next Thursday, when you shall have further orders.” And Freytag, in a note of the most excessive politeness, conveys this message to Voltaire.

Voltaire’s patience had had eighteen days to run out: and the supply was pretty well exhausted. At his side was his niece dying to go, and anticipating, not unnaturally, that Frederick intended something very sinister indeed by these delays. Voltaire went to Freytag and asked to see Fredersdorff’s despatch. And Freytag refused, in a rage. That night Madame Denis wrote to the AbbÉ de Prades—as the intimate of Frederick—telling him of this new insult and delay. And Voltaire resolved upon action.

Leaving Madame Denis to look after the luggage and await events at the “Golden Lion,” on Wednesday, June 20th, about three o’clock in the afternoon, Voltaire and Collini slipped out of the inn and went to another hostelry, called the “Crown of the Empire,” where they got into a post-chaise which was returning to Mayence. A servant followed them as far as the “Crown of the Empire” and put into the post-chaise a cash-box and two portfolios. But for the fact that one of the escaping criminals, sombrely dressed in black velvet for the occasion, dropped a notebook in the city and spent four minutes of priceless time looking for it, they would have been out of Frankfort and the jurisdiction of Freytag before that breathless and flurried official caught them up and arrested them, with the assistance of the officer at the Mayence gate, which they had actually reached.

It is not necessary to say that Voltaire did not submit to this arrest tamely. He argued with no little passion and adroitness. Collini supported all his statements impartially. “The worst bandits could not have struggled more to get away,” said unfortunate Freytag. But the Resident had might on his side, if not right. He left Voltaire and Collini under a guard of six soldiers and “flew” back to the Burgomaster of Frankfort, who confirmed the arrest. When the unhappy official got back to the city gate, he found Voltaire had spent his time burning papers. What he did not know, was that Voltaire had further taken advantage of his absence to abstract a sheaf of manuscript from one of the portfolios and to give it to Collini, saying, “Hide that somewhere about you.”

Freytag brought his prisoners back to the city in his carriage, which was surrounded by a guard of soldiers, and very soon by a crowd. He took them to the house of that Councillor Schmidt (whose office had been temporarily filled on June 1st by Councillor Rucker) because, said Freytag, the landlord of the “Golden Lion” would not have Voltaire in his house any longer “on account of his incredible meanness.” Freytag then made the prisoners give up the cash-box and their money. “Count the money,” said Schmidt; “they are quite capable of pretending they had more than they really had.” From Voltaire were also taken “his watch, his snuff-box, and some jewels that he wears.” Collini recounts that Voltaire feigned illness to soften the hearts of his captors. But this very transparent ruse failed entirely; as might have been expected. After two hours’ waiting, Dorn, Freytag’s clerk, a disgraced solicitor of Frankfort, took the pair to a low tavern called the “Goat,” where Voltaire was shut up in one room guarded by three soldiers with bayonets; and Collini in another. Voltaire’s cash-box and portfolios had been left in a trunk at Schmidt’s, and the trunk padlocked.

Madame Denis, hearing of Voltaire’s arrest, had flown to try the effect of feminine eloquence upon the Burgomaster.

He replied by putting her under arrest at the “Golden Lion”; and presently sent her, under guard of Dorn and three soldiers, to the “Goat” tavern, where she was placed in a garret with no furniture in it but a bed; “soldiers for femmes de chambre, and bayonets for curtains.” Madame Denis appears to have spent the night in hysterics. The miscreant Dorn actually persisted in taking his supper in her room and emptying bottle after bottle in her presence and treating her with insult. The truth was, Freytag and Dorn did not believe in her nieceship to Voltaire and mistook the poor lady for a wholly disreputable character.

Collini spent his night, dressed, on his bed. Beneath the shelter of its curtains he drew forth from his breeches that sheaf of manuscript Voltaire had given him at the Mayence gate. It was the manuscript of the “Pucelle,” so far as it was then written.

If Voltaire spent his night in a rage, he had every excuse for it. At ten o’clock in the evening he wrote to that good friend of his, the Margravine, laying his desperate case before her and begging her to send his letter on to her brother. He had broken his parole—true; but not until Freytag had broken his written agreement that when that “Œuvre de PoËshie” arrived he should go where he listed. He had borne a most galling delay not impatiently. For being in possession of a book which had been given to him, he, his niece, and his servant had been hustled, jostled, and insulted. If the book was blasphemous, indecent, and a dangerous work for a king to have written, was that Voltaire’s fault? He had but corrected its blunders and its grammar. If its model was the “Pucelle”—the royal author had chosen that model himself. Voltaire suffered for the King’s imprudence and for the King’s official’s folly. He was in a situation not too common to him—he really was not the aggressor.

The following day, Thursday, June 21st, the Potsdam mail arrived bringing orders dated June 16th from Frederick—just returned from his tour—that Voltaire, on giving his promise and a written agreement that he would send back the “PoËshie” to Freytag within a given time, and without making any copies of it, was to be allowed to go “in peace and with civility.”

That is all very well, thinks fussy Freytag. But when the King wrote that, he did not know this Voltaire had set at naught his Resident’s solemn authority and had had the audacity to try and escape. He must wait to go until we hear what the King’s commands are when he knows of this abominable breach of discipline.

Voltaire, goaded to desperation, wrote again to the Margravine of Bayreuth, begging her to send to his Majesty a most indignant statement of the wrongs done to Madame Denis—the statement having been drawn up by that outraged lady herself. As a good niece, she also wrote again passionately, direct to the King, on behalf of her uncle. He himself implored Freytag in quite humble terms to at least let them go back to the “Golden Lion,” which was a more decent habitation than the “Goat”; and, besides, would save the prisoners from paying for two prisons.

A few hours after, he appealed again to the mercy of that harassed and unfortunate jailer. All these letters are of June 21st. It must have been a busy day. It is strange that at such a juncture Voltaire himself did not write direct to the King. It could not have been his pride that prevented him. If pride was an obstacle in the way of attaining his end, an impulsive Voltaire could always kick it aside. Besides, he stooped to entreat a Dorn and a Freytag. In answer to his requests Madame Denis and Collini were allowed to go out of doors. But Voltaire was kept to his room in that wretched “Goat” and guarded by two sentinels as if he had been a dangerous criminal awaiting hanging. Four days went by. Then, on June 25th, came clearer and more positive orders from Frederick to let the prisoners go. Frederick was sick of the business and ashamed of it. But still, argues Freytag, when he sent those orders, he did not know of the attempt to escape. So the only effect of them was that the guards were removed from the door, and Voltaire was put on his honour not to leave the room.

The chest of books from Strasburg had meanwhile been opened; and the “PoÈshie” extracted therefrom. But for the punctilious idiocy of one dull official, Voltaire might long ago have been at his PlombiÈres and have done with Prussia for ever. The very burgomaster began to pity him. Frankfort was near regarding him as a martyr. Freytag, a little nervous, splendidly allowed the captive the freedom of the whole inn; and then he and that captive fought tooth and nail over money matters. For Voltaire had not only endured the miseries of arrest and detention, but had had to pay their whole expenses. He and Collini swore they had been robbed of jewels, money, and papers, and of various trifles as well.

On July 5th—after they had been detained thirty-five days—came sharp orders from Potsdam that Voltaire was to be released at once. Even a Freytag could doubt and delay no more. On July 6th the party returned to the “Golden Lion”: where Voltaire called in a lawyer and laid before him a succinct account of the events of those five-and-thirty days. Collini completed their preparations for departure. On the very morning when they were going, the impetuous Voltaire caught sight of Dorn passing his door and rushed out at him with a loaded pistol. Collini intervened. They had been in scrapes enough already.

On July 7, 1753, Voltaire and Collini left Frankfort. That fighting, scrambling, wearying month of folly and indignity was over. The same night they reached Mayence-on-the-Rhine—a city which knew not Frederick. The day following, Madame Denis left Frankfort for Paris.

Nothing is more remarkable about the Frankfort affair than the moderation Voltaire, considering he was Voltaire, displayed in it. When the Margravine wrote on the subject to her brother and described Voltaire as “intense and bilious” and “capable of every imprudence,” the description was not unfair. When Frederick wrote to his sister and said plainly that Voltaire and Madame Denis lied in their descriptions of the event and coloured it and embroidered on it to suit their own ends, he was not precisely lying, though he was not precisely truthful, himself. But leaving the account of Voltaire, Madame Denis, and Collini altogether alone, from the account of Freytag the prejudiced, it is proved that Voltaire behaved, all things considered, with a great deal of philosophy and an unusual amount of patience.

Why?

He was leaving Prussia—with enormous difficulty to be sure—but he was leaving it at last. He was returning, as he hoped, to France. He had made a final trial of courts and kings—and found them wanting. Liberty was whispering and wooing him again—the siren he had loved and deserted, and whom he was to love again and desert no more. His blessed monotonous work at his “Annals” made him “forget all the Freytags.” For five hours a day, whether he was living in palaces or in prison, with princes or with jailers, he “laboured tranquilly” at that book. The comic side of the situation appealed to him. He knew, or said he knew, that he deserved some of his misfortunes. And above all—far above all—the dream and the night were ending, and with the dawn of a new day came the courage, the fight, and the energy to win it.